290 



CHUCKOR IN THE WAY. 



still kept their positions like sentinels on the rocks above. 

 We waited patiently for them to move down, until it grew 

 so late that, at the risk of their detecting us, we commenced 

 crawling cautiously on towards the hollow. We had almost 

 reached a spot which commanded it, when up got a chuckor 

 partridge in front of us. This was bad enough, but it was 

 much worse when, a little farther on, the rest of the covey 

 rose with a whirr ! and flew right over the hollow. On 

 carefully raising my head to reconnoitre, I could see at a 

 glance that the tahr had taken alarm and were on the alert. 

 One old buck stood within easy range, gazing straight to- 

 wards me ; but before I could cover him, he was galloping 

 away with the rest of the herd down the hollow. I let 

 drive at a big black fellow that was leading, and thought I 

 had hit him, though he still continued his course. We fol- 

 lowed up at once, and soon came on our friend as he lay, 

 looking very sick, behind a rock. Another shot sent him off 

 again into some precipitous ground, where we could see him 

 standing rather groggily on a ledge ; but it had now growi 

 too dark to follow him farther that evening. Fortunatel;; 

 there was a bright moon to light us back to our camp, which_ 

 was about two miles off, and some of the footing was not of 

 the best. 



That night I witnessed from our camp a remarkably 

 beautiful moonlight effect. As the moon sank towards the 

 irregular ridge of the summit of Trisool,^ rising 22,300 feet 

 high, away across the misty depths of the Doulee valley fai 

 below, the immense snow-fields that lay along its uppei 

 slopes glistened like broad sheets of burnished silver in th( 

 sheen of the moonbeams that played on them, causing th( 

 shadowy forms of the adjacent snow-peaks to loom all the 

 more dim and unearthly in their pallid solemnity. 



^ So called by the natives from its irregular summit being supposed tc 

 resemble a ** trisool" or trident, which is by Hindoos regarded as symbolics 

 of their divine triad — Brahma, the creator ; Vishnu, the preserver ; Siva, th< 

 destroyer, 



